


have you ever said a pretty word?

by handschuhmaus



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Albus Dumbledore as an unreliable or at least biased narrator, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Older Woman/Younger Man, and also incidentally somewhat misogynistic, unreliable narrators period
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:08:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23776621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handschuhmaus/pseuds/handschuhmaus
Summary: Merope ran off and made her own life...until she came back and had a fling with her once crush's son, him intending scandal.Eleven years later, Albus Dumbledore comes to fetch a child who isn't the product of an orphanage. And it's the 60s: social revolution is in the air both wizardly and Muggle.
Relationships: Merope Gaunt & Tom Riddle
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	have you ever said a pretty word?

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Belle & Sebastian's "Come on Sister"

2 June 1966

Albus Dumbledore is anticipating a promotion to actual Headmaster of Hogwarts, at which point he probably won't be making these home visits anymore. He's not sure he'll miss them. 

But there is little chance that, with a last name of Riddle, the child is anything but a Muggleborn and for now he must do his duty. He hopes they haven't attacked the child for it; there's been a spate of that recently and he feels very sensitive about it, considering the matter of Ariana, so many years ago. 

He knocks at the door and is admitted by the probably Martin Riddle. The boy has shaggy dark hair and is wearing some grimy playclothes. 

"Hello, young man. I am Professor Albus Dumbledore, from Hogwarts School of Wizardry." They've been experimenting with leaving off the "and witchcraft" to Muggles and Muggleborns the past few decades; it seems to get a better reception. 

Martin looks up at him confusedly. "What is it you want, _Sir_?" Hmm. Strange. There had been some reply, if a very brief one, to their owl.

"Are your parents home, Martin?" he asks instead of answering.

"Mother's in the cellar," he says, but makes no move to fetch her.

"What about your father?" It is still usually the policy, with Muggleborns, that they deal with the father. Otherwise, well, ugly disputes have arisen...

"He--might not be back in town this week," the boy admits warily, staring at Albus. 

"Wrooong!" a cheerful voice rings out just behind Dumbledore. "I'm here, Marty!"

"Hello, Father," says the boy very formally, and Albus turns to see a man who is probably in his early thirties and dressed, to the wizard's eye, very strangely. 

"Tom," says a quiet female voice, "what's going on?" She is not pretty, and she is quite old enough to be the man's mother. 

"Don't be so stiff, Marty. I figure this is Professor Bumblemore, from the Boghearts school," says the boy's father, and Albus readies a game smile and pleasant manner to explain that he has that _almost_ right, only...

Only the woman turns suddenly pale and wary. "You're Dumbledore," she says, in a not very admiring voice.

"Er, what?" says Mr. Riddle (or at least Albus suppose it's him) "I read the letter and replied myself, dearest. I thought with your ...disadvantaged background you probably didn't know how boarding schools operate."

"You mean Martin got a Hogwarts letter," she says, clearly understanding what it is, but also feeling put out by it. 

"Did you, ah, have wizard relations?" Albus asks her, although he's not sure exactly who she is.

She stares at him and at Mr. Riddle for a long minute, maybe two. "I suppose you had better come in and tell Martin about it," she finally invites, in a stricken voice.

* * *

It has always been one thing for a wizard to go out into the world and have a child by a Muggle woman. (Indeed, some contingents treat a Muggleborn witch as the same thing.) It is popularly a very different thing, should a witch, of any sort, have a child by a Muggle. That is to say, they become soiled goods, so to speak.

For the first time in history, too, there's a Muggleborn Minister of Magic. _But_ , Albus Dumbledore is fairly certain that the Slytherin Schism of nine years prior is what will go down in the history books about the time. 

An implausible contingent of the Bulstrode and Zabini families had rallied for the Malfoy heir and...more scandalously, the former Miss Prince. The Crabbes, also, had refused to buy into the opposing conservative faction, although their support had not been vocal. 

The main problem was that Lord Ephineas Prince had refused to disown his daughter, nor demand the dissolution of her Muggle marriage. The Malfoy heir, well-he had only shirked his duties as heir, and yet the direction he was leading the moneyed family somehow aligned with Miss Prince. 

She had not been a pretty girl, either, and the transfiguration professor still doesn't understand why it was that she had gone into the Muggle world to marry. 

He thinks about this, for some reason, as Mr. Riddle has them all sit down around a kitchen table.

"Young Martin, I want you to know you're a wizard," he announces.

Martin looks at his mother. "So they want me to go to Hogwarts," he says, in a high cold voice. 

"Whoa whoa here, mister, how did you get our son's name?" asks Martin's father, and Dumbledore wonders if that means this hag is the boy's mother.

"They're magically registered. Given they have enough magic," the woman says bitterly.

"So you do have wizard relations?" Albus prompts. He would remember her if she had been through Hogwarts in the past sixty years. 

She gives him a pained look, and remains silent. 

"I have to go off to school?" says Martin, and for the first time Albus wonders if the boy is ...entirely right in the head. Because his voice is still high and cold and he obviously resents the question.

"Well, yes," Albus reaffirms. "You need to be taught how to use your magic. Would you like a demonstration of what it's possible to do?"

"No," the woman refuses flatly.

Albus tries to protest, "But--", only to be cut off.

"No." she repeats.

He might as well, he supposes, move on. "I'll need to take him to our wizarding district to get supplies." Clearly she knows something about Hogwarts, but she is rather a puzzle in this refusal. What IS the attitude towards magic in this household.

"I will take him," she insists, and before he can protest that Diagon Alley isn't that easy to access, she adds "I've been to Diagon Alley."

Rather ruffled, Albus doesn't quite know how to counter that at the moment, and settles for leaving with a reminder to Martin, "Remember, the train leaves from Platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross Station on September 1." He doesn't get a further reply.

**Author's Note:**

> despite enjoying mathematics I'm not that great with coordinating dates, but I figure that either A. witches, having a longer life lifespan, might have a little longer window of childbearing age and/or B you could also believe that Merope in this timeline was born a few years later. He's definitely a late in life baby for his mother, but fudging that might mean she's more like 40-42.


End file.
